Linda looked up from her plate, expression carefully neutral. Heart rate spiking beneath her careful composure.
ARIA crossed to her, movements fluid as water finding its path. She reached into a small bag she carried. "Your vitamins." She set a bottle on the table—ordinary-looking pills in an ordinary-looking container.
"One with breakfast, one with dinner. Don't skip doses."
To everyone else, it looked like medicine for a fever.
But these were no ordinary vitamins—nothing so basic as folic acid or iron supplements. These were molecular constructs centuries ahead of human pharmacology, infused with energy that Linda didn't have a name for but would feel working in her body.
Each pill contained compounds that would optimize cellular development, enhance neural formation, strengthen the growing life inside her in ways no human medicine could achieve.
